Cons: Earpads get uncomfortable at times, clamping force loosen after a while

As this is my first headphones that costed me over 50$, I kind of regretting buying it at first, because it costed too much. But after a while, I listen to it more and more and I came to like it. Very much. It felt very comfortable at first, but after a while, the pad hardens. I heard that the M50 pads has pads hardening issue, but from what I was told at the place where I bought it, they said I should always wipe the pads with a wet cloth and let it dry to prevent the pads from the hardening.

Too late, it had already happened, and I only get to know of such information after 11 months of using it (and it's mostly due to me being a heavy sweater). The headband is very soft and comfortable.

Now, to the main point. The M50 is the kind that would give one the impression of being a studio, as it is a monitoring headphones, with such design and all. The sound quality is very great. It's pretty warm, and not too bright. The bass is very controlled and gives out great kicks and punches too. I listened to various genres, from classical, jazz, heavy metal, thrash metal, death metal, drum and bass, dubstep, electro, house, etc. Given the M50 as an all-rounder, it sounded great for whatever I listened to.

I don't have any amps plugged in, since I do not have any. But it still sounded great. Most of the time, I only listened to them from my Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. I used to have all in FLAC, but I re-encoded them to 320k as I need to broaden my library and FLACs are taking too much. If I want to listen to FLAC, I'd just listen to them from my computer.

I also tried messing with the equalizer, to make the M50 sounded more to my liking. As I'm actually a basshead myself, I tried to maximized the bass on the M50 without breaking the balance of the sound. It turned out great. The audio remains balanced. From that time, I realize how heavy the bass on the M50.

It is an excellent pair for starters. I do not regret buying the M50, though I seek for an upgrade from the M50.

P.s. Regarding the price, my country has a pretty high tax value, so the cost it a lot higher than other countries.